


Afterword

by mercuriallyCooperative



Category: Cyrano de Bergerac - Edmond Rostand
Genre: Gen, although you shouldn't need to know anything about it to understand this really, beware as this intersects with my long running original setting slightly, but that's been canon for a very long time anyway, major character death implied I guess, mentions of Roxane/Christian, mentions of Roxane/Cyrano
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-09-19 01:24:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9411275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercuriallyCooperative/pseuds/mercuriallyCooperative
Summary: They were lost long ago. But, in the end, Cyrano calls them back.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Ah, this is another old one. I wrote it near the end of Spring 2014. My residence hall put on a theatre production of Cyrano de Bergerac, and I'd managed to get my inexperienced self involved in several small roles. Around the same time, I was writing for the anthology my writing club puts out each semester. I suppose some of the lines I'd heard practiced so many times stuck with me; this is the result.
> 
> It runs a little bit into my long-running original setting, the Winter Kingdom, but all you really need to know about it is that the kingdom is comprised mostly of people lost or running from a thousand universes and more. And unless you're already a universe-walker, it's very hard to find your way back home.

He didn't know how the letter found them. They were fifteen years gone from their homeland, and had never been able to find the way back in seven long years of trying. He supposed he should not doubt the power of sorcery, now that he had called this place his home so long. He had even gathered some of it about himself, under the auspices of his new Lord and Patron, the High King of this country of winter and night.

But he had not heard the name Cyrano de Bergerac outside of very old stories since they had fallen away from their old home.

Sorcerer Duke de Guiche looked over at his dear friend, the Duchess Roxane, as she, too, read the letter. He paused at the thought. Strange, that those were their names now. Their tale, Cyrano's tale, was famous in this Kingdom, and the names by which they were known in it had become their only names. De Guiche and Roxane, and that was all.

The names inspired respect, he supposed, and he was not displeased with it. Still. He had not heard his given name in years, except from Roxane, and vice versa. He regretted that, a little.

He returned his attention to the letter.

“ _Comte de Guiche, Lady Roxane,_ ” it had begun with their old titles, and in a way de Guiche knew in his bones what news would follow such a beginning. Of course, of course their Cyrano, like the one of the stories, would not have been brought low by the war and glory he so loved. Of course he would survive long enough for some bitter foe to strike him down ingloriously with a trick and a trap that de Guiche would almost have admired, had he not buried his grievances toward de Bergerac along with the trappings of his own old life.

Now all the was left was a faint admiration and a faint pity for Cyrano, and no small worry for Roxane. For she had learned, long ago, how it had been Cyrano who composed the love letters she held so dear to her heart.

Roxane looked up from this new missive, that sought their presence as Cyrano lay dying in his home. The letter, penned in a shaky hand, asking if they still lived, if they would see him off to enter God's house, and broadly sweep that azure threshold. Even dying, Roxane thought tearfully, Cyrano was eloquent in all his way and word.

She would lose the man she loved three times, now. To death and to disappearing and now to death again.

She looked over at de Guiche, who merely stared back at her, waiting patiently. He had learned that patience, at a thousand high costs in this new place of theirs. And so she did not begrudge him the love that they both knew he held for her, even after all this time.

"I want to say goodbye," she says, merely. But her companion nods, as though she had said a thousand words. "Then we must leave now," he tells her, and with one gesture sends a message to their fief explaining their absence, and with another summons horses from the frost and mist around them. They ride to the edges of the Citadel, precious letter clutched in Roxane's hand- for it is the letter which shall carry them back to their old world as they have never been able to do before.

They ride to the edges of the Citadel, and beyond it, out into the mist and the frost and the dark of the nights in this country. They ride to the edges of the world and beyond it, so that they may say "Good-bye" to the bravest coward and sanest lunatic they had ever known.

And as they depart, a light dusting of the last of winter's snow drifts down in their wake.

It flutters about them both, like a ducal mantle or a mourner's veil.


End file.
